Jack Kirby's illustration of Olympia from The Eternals predicts the mysteries of Occator Crater Lights?

a) In The Eternals #9 comic book, from March, 1977, Jack Kirby drew an illustration showing Olympia, home of the Eternals, and above it flew a large flying serpent but the city showed a structure that was comparable to what seemed to resemble a structure in the glowing forms photographed in Occator Crater on the Ceres planetoid in 2015.

Illustration by Jack Kirby from The Eternals and detail from Occator Crater together


b) I have already made a comparison between this drawing and a landscape drawing by HR Giger that looks partially inspired by the drawing of a cylinder vacuum cleaner transformed into a secret military weapon or installation in the movie Our Man In Havana, and then later I believe that Giger used this drawing by Kirby with knowledge about how it interpreted his work for the later stages of the design of the derelict ship in Alien
  1. See: Alien: Giger referenced Jack Kirby for the later stages of the derelict design? 
  2. See: Alien: From Our Man In Havana to the Derelict Ship exterior 

c)  Since Jack Kirby is renowned for his early depiction of the Face on Mars in a comic book story,  (See: The Face on Mars,  "Race for the moon" #2, 1958) one might ask if he made an internal flyby of Occator crater, or indeed created a drawing that would predict elements familiar with those who would develop a fascination for the thing? What he drew would be something for a comic book page characterising the place rather than as an illustration for a book exploring the place in detail.

My view though is that if the illustration of Olympia can't be considered reminiscent enough of the structure in the Occator lights, then one can only continue to look for something that ought to be it amongst Kirby's drawings.

detail of Occator Crater from NASA image PIA20350

d) An illustration interpreting the Occator Landscape was drawn by Andrew Currie

A large sloping structure with glowing forms either side, which appears to be something noticeable in the Kirby illustration.

If there is a city structure to be found Occator Crater, Andrew Currie's drawing was based on what there was to be seen in 2015 which was a fairly low resolution image of the place and perhaps Jack Kirby's illustration perhaps represents a very simplified and stylised impression of the place in itself, but there's enough general similarity in the large sloping building with structures either side of it without having to look for something more exact.

Detail of Olympia from The Eternals #8,  March 1977

Detail from Occator Crater illustration by Andrew Currie, 2015

Occator Crater by Andrew Currie, 2015
(source: Richard C Hoagland's "The Other Side of Midnight" website
https://www.theothersideofmidnight.com/2015-12-12-new/)

(e) Exploration of revised version of Olympia by Sal Buscema from The Eternals v2 #001 (1985)

e.i) September 10th 2016, I've discovered a later interpretation of the Olympia city by Sal Buscema published in The Eternals v2 #001 (1985) which was basically Kirby's Olympia redrawn without the flying serpent.  It makes it look as if various elements had been displaced in Kirby's for the purpose of adding the flying serprent and here they've been put back in order,  and so the vertical belt of lights now seems to show up properly because embarrassingly I was wondering where they were.

 

Olympia drawn by Sal Buscema from The Eternals v2 #001 (1985)


e.ii)  Cerealia Facula
In my view, here the Cerealia Facula becomes the domed tower on the left with wings sticking out.



e.iii) Structure roughly resembling a humanoid head and shoulders
Within the Cerealia Facula, there is a structure roughly resembling a humanoid head and and upper torso staring up and to the right of it is a block like shadow and perhaps this has been incorporated into the cityscape illustration but with the structure displaced and moved to the right bottom roughly where the Vinalia Faculae's T-shaped shaped building like structure right light ought to be. In Kirby's illustration, this figure is obscured by the flying reptile's tail, making it look roughly like a bird with folded wings pointed upwards and pipe like feet.






e.iv) Vinalia Faculae: The vertical belt of lights
The vertical belt of lights that run down the middle becomes the cross,




 
e. v) Vinalia Faculae: Oval shape along the belt of light



e.vi)  Vinalia Faculae: The lower light square
Perhaps the light at the lower end of the central vertical belt of lights becomes the gap of the U shape of the top of the building to the left of the human figure 



e.vii) Vinalia Faculae: The T shaped building
Then the main lights formation to the right that looks like a sloping T shape remains as the central building with the slope in it, the light on the left side of the T remains as a tower composed of four cigar case shaped cylinders while the light on the right side becomes becomes a human figure.

9 comments:

  1. Page exploring the Olympia complex from Jack Kirby's The Eternals #9, March 1977 and its similarity to the glowing forms in Occator Crater on the Ceres Planetoid published 18th August 2017

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  2. Added Occator crater in view of the revised version of Olympia by Sal Buscema from The Eternals v2 #001 (1985)


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  3. Great side-by-side comparisons, Dominic. Thank you for acknowledging my digital paintings of Occator Crater, from Richard C. Hoagland's, The Other Side of Midnight web site. I have to tell you that I had odd feelings when I creatively extrapolated from NASA's Dawn images of Ceres. The name of this dwarf planet is interesting as it's the Roman goddess of agriculture; hence it's a mother! There might be an ocean below the surface, and if so, what might be present within? Was there an ancient high-tech civilization that 'tended' to something in Ceres itself, deep in the heart of that mysterious crater which Kirby may have eerily depicted in his art?

    Keep going man! It's this kind of imaginative speculation which will one day reveal who we truly are and what we might become ... again.

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    1. Good to hear from you Andrew.

      It's rather odd that this blog was supposed to be about the evolution of ideas that led to the Alien movies and the surrealism of the artist HR Giger, along with other comparable things, perhaps in a way inspired by Robert Graves book Greek Mythology. My process of exploring these things is near enough having the sense or being mentally told that something is connected with something else. Soon it mentally unfolds and my mind starts grabbing details. It might be worrying for me to suddenly realise how Occator Crater should fit into this but at the end of the day I'm happy with it. I hope to find more examples of things that seem to be the Occator lights by other artists throughout history, there might be something else..

      I have been trying to map out the details of Occator over the last couple of years, I keep making maps that are too vague and complicated to make any sense out of. The photos certainly overwhelm me with the energy of the place. There are shapes and forms that seem to overlay each other that are almost impossible to interpret, but it's a beautiful form of confusion to experience. Perhaps I am getting used to the geography there, and I hope NASA will show more complete detailed photographs soon. I suppose I'll have to put up side by side comparisons of details from the lower resolution Occator images and the higher resolution images just to show the difference there too for the sake of interplanetary art history!

      Thankfully you did something that's a great starting point for looking at Occator Crater that Richard Hoagland could present to the public and I appreciate that when PIA20350 came out while ago, you realised that there was certainly more to work out.

      I have to say that when I spent a lot of time exploring the Martian cityscape in photo known as the Fall In Hellas Basin, I found the energy of that place very spooky for quite some time but perhaps I started to be greeted by a friendlier side to the place. I admit that I'm still trying to find out who's at home in Occator.

      Best wishes Dominic

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    2. Now I've got to a point where I think Kirby started using his ideas about the mysterious city for The Great Refuge (home of the Inhumans) in The Fantastic Four back in 1967, his style of architecture is comparable and while this "The Great Refuge", went off in another direction of development, he revisited his mysterious city of course later in The Eternals. http://alienexplorations.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/jack-kirby-great-refuge.html

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    3. Now, I'm having the idea that the Nativity Icon at St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai from approximately the 7th Century somehow references Occator Crater in some way. It was one of those intuitive taps on the head. http://alienexplorations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/echoes-of-occator-crater-of-ceres.html

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  4. Added note about structure roughly resembling a humanoid head and shoulders and its equivalent in the Olympia city illustrations.

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  5. You nailed it about Mars! It is VERY spooky to visually 'walk through' the images provided by the various NASA probes & rovers. Have you had a chance to go through the Curiosity Rover pictures? Go to Keith Laney's gigapans http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans?query=Keith+Laney & you will be ASTONISHED! It's actually very upsetting and veritably sad. Check his work out. You won't be able to stop looking despite the devastation of Gale Crater.

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    1. Sorry, to be so late in replying, my brain has been shoved into the outer orbits of the solar system trying to work this Occator thing out. I do look at the Curiosity Rover pictures when Keith appears on Richard C Hoagland's show. I do feel the sadness there. I have to say that the image of the broken head in the sand known as The Pharoah caught my imagination and I wanted to draw little pictures of it. It's quite challenging to understand the bits and pieces being discovered in in Hale Crater but there have certainly been lots of abstract things poking out here and there that make me wonder. I loved your recent exploration of the "Rim City" structure on Phobos, that set my imagination on fire.

      I've found a couple of photos of the Cerealia Facula area in Occator that together as a stereogram showed off some a very interesting arrangement of structures standing out in 3D in more detail than I have seen before, that blasted my brains a bit. I can't claim that what I would be seeing is completely correct, because I suppose I can try to make stereograms out of various images of the place, and they'll give different results, but it turned some abstract transparent band of ribbing above the bulge into something a bit more solid, and transformed a few other things in a lovely way. It almost terrifies me to imagine the possibilities of an architectural layout around the place. I'm going to have to start drawing pictures of that myself to work it out.

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